What would attract FA's to Detroit?

-Not money, cuz Joe won't pay it
-Not superstar teammates...Rip is the closest we can come
-Not a title prospect, cuz we're at least a couple years away
-Not a promising young nucleus...upcoming draft will be little help
-Not coaching, cuz Curry's a joke
-Not climate...weather or economy

+Pistons have a pretty good NBA history
+The organization is somewhat respected
+Joe seems to be a straight-up guy
+Roundball One
+Arnie Kander with his frozen bananas & mangos

-Not money, cuz Joe won't pay it
-Not superstar teammates...Rip is the closest we can come
-Not a title prospect, cuz we're at least a couple years away
-Not a promising young nucleus...upcoming draft will be little help
-Not coaching, cuz Curry's a joke
-Not climate...weather or economy

+Pistons have a pretty good NBA history
+The organization is somewhat respected
+Joe seems to be a straight-up guy
+Roundball One
+Arnie Kander with his frozen bananas & mangos

discuss

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American and Lafayette?

Doesn't every NBA team have its own private jet now?

Yeah, not much to attract a free agent. But right now, I thought Joe actually did have as much moolah as anyone else. I don't think the money issues would make us lose a free agent. He isn't going to waste it, but I think the talk of the Pistons being cheap to players is overblown. Now, they do screw their customers...

I don't think the situation is hopeless but it does look pretty bleak to me right now.

I feel it's sort of relative. Since so many teams are over the cap, all they have is the MLE, and since the Pistons can offer more than that they will have a competitive advantage against these teams. Also, teams up against the lux tax won't even offer the MLE so they are out of the running.

If I was an NBA FA, money would be the biggest factor for making my decision of where to go.

The only real competition the Pistons have for FA's is with other teams under the cap. I'm not sure what the list of teams that is right now, but I know it's not many and teams like Memphis and OKC are on the list. We have as good a chance of winning in the near future as these teams and have a better run franchise. Worse weather during the season though.

Overall I feel we can be competitive with FA offers if this is the route we choose to go, but we will not have a huge advantage over some other teams.

If you look at the list of FAs available you won't see many that can turn around a franchise on their own or even with two of them combined. Joe needs to package some of our stockpiled draft picks, expiring contracts (sign and trade AI and/or Sheed) and current talent to TRADE for high level talent. If you look at a current example of hiw a team turned it around look no further than Boston. They were even worse off than we are and won the 'ship the very next year and why?..........because of blockbuster trades. They do have a nice supporting cast of wisely chosen draft picks but most of the weight falls on the acquisition of Allen and Garnett.

If you look at the list of FAs available you won't see many that can turn around a franchise on their own or even with two of them combined. Joe needs to package some of our stockpiled draft picks, expiring contracts (sign and trade AI and/or Sheed) and current talent to TRADE for high level talent. If you look at a current example of hiw a team turned it around look no further than Boston. They were even worse off than we are and won the 'ship the very next year and why?..........because of blockbuster trades. They do have a nice supporting cast of wisely chosen draft picks but most of the weight falls on the acquisition of Allen and Garnett.

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Trades are more complicated than FA signings. And I doubt that we will ever see a team trade for 2 HOFs in the same off season. Boston had to give up a lot to make this happen:

In other words "lightning in a bottle". We've already caught our lightning with our Sheed steal. And also it seems like teams don't won't our leftovers. Joe anounced last May that "there are no sacred cows" but we were 2 games into this season when we finally made the Chauncey/AI deal. I aggree that trades can produce better/faster results but they are much harder to pull off.

In other words "lightning in a bottle". We've already caught our lightning with our Sheed steal. And also it seems like teams don't won't our leftovers. Joe anounced last May that "there are no sacred cows" but we were 2 games into this season when we finally made the Chauncey/AI deal. I aggree that trades can produce better/faster results but they are much harder to pull off.

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No doubt, but my point was we are much more likely to build a winner through this avenue than to wait around for the right FAs hoping they sign with us or worse yet settling for what's out there now.

CB and Dice are really the only FA signings that Joe has done that made a huge impact on our finals runs, and both of them were signed at the MLE level. Most of our pieces were acquired through trades. Our large amount of cap-space is a great trade tool as well.

It wouldn't be so bad if he had decent ties, although matching a dead squirrel to those suits wouldn't be so hard.

Best dressed coach I have seen in recent years was Sam Mitchell. All of his suits looked like they were tailored and high end. He looked like he could walk off the sideline and into a dinner party reception.

It wouldn't be so bad if he had decent ties, although matching a dead squirrel to those suits wouldn't be so hard.

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I agree. If you are going to wear a suit with that loud of a window-pane pattern, you can't really pair it with a tie that has a different loud pattern. Solid color would look best (actually leaving that suit on the rack and going with the plain gray would look best).

CB and Dice are really the only FA signings that Joe has done that made a huge impact on our finals runs, and both of them were signed at the MLE level. Most of our pieces were acquired through trades. Our large amount of cap-space is a great trade tool as well.

I think there are a lot of things to attract good players here. The organization is solid. Its support staff and facilites seem to be above average. In previous years we had little room for a player to carve out their our successful niche. Since we are in transition...we have that and a history of people getting it done that way here. The league is full of alpha dogs looking for that place where they can be that and be successful at it. This is a good place for that.